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Note: Before preparing or distributing any food in the classroom, make sure you are aware of children's allergies or dietary restrictions and caution children about choking hazards. Many people suffer from serious allergies to nuts, particularly peanuts. Make sure that your students, students who may be in the classroom after the activity, or students in nearby classrooms do not have such allergies.

Subjects

Arts & Humanities

Educational Technology

Mathematics
--
Arithmetic, Measurement

Physical Education and Health
-- Nutrition

Science
-- Agriculture, Botany, Life Sciences

Social Studies
-- U.S. History

Grade

PreK

K-2

3-5

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Brief Description

Peanuts spur all kinds of classroom activities -- from making timelines and snacks to investigating how peanut plants grow and estimating the number of peanuts in a large container!

Objectives

Students

understand the role of the peanut in U.S. history.

make a timeline based on a brief history of peanuts.

learn where to find the "seed" of the peanut plant.

grow peanut plants.

measure ingredients to make peanut recipes.

estimate the number of peanuts in a large container.

write math problems to help count the number of peanuts in the container.

Share with students A Short Peanut History. This resource includes lots of information students can use to make a simple timeline of the history of the peanut.

Younger students might work in small groups with some members of the group doing the research, others making the timeline, and others hunting for clip art or drawing illustrations to add to the timeline.

Older students will be able to make more inferences from the material and use other library resources and Internet resources to flesh out their timelines. They might even write letters to request additional materials from a variety of Peanut Organizations.

Peanut-s-timation! Fill a large container with peanuts, and provide plenty of time for students to estimate the number of peanuts in the container. Students can write their names and estimates on slips of paper and submit them. When it's time to count the peanuts to determine whose estimate comes closest, give each student a large handful of peanuts and have them group the peanuts by tens and ones. Then have each student work with a partner to combine their tens and ones -- and write a math problem that shows how they arrived at a total. Then have two pairs combine their peanuts and write a new problem. Continue combining peanuts in that manner until all the peanuts are combined and students have determined the number of peanuts in the container and whose estimate came closest. Then enjoy a peanut snack!

Assessment

Have students compare one another's timelines and rate them. Provide small baggies of peanuts as a special reward for the five students whose estimates come closest to the actual number of peanuts in the container.

MATHEMATICS: Number and OperationsGRADES Pre-K - 2NM-NUM.PK-2.2 Understand Meanings of Operations and How They Relate to One Another NM-NUM.PK-2.3 Compute Fluently and Make Reasonable EstimatesGRADES 3 - 5NM-NUM.3-5.2 Understand Meanings of Operations and How They Relate to One Another NM-NUM.3-5.3 Compute Fluently and Make Reasonable Estimates

SOCIAL SCIENCES: U.S. HistoryGRADES K - 4NSS-USH.K-4.3 The History of the United States: Democratic Principles and Values and the People from Many Cultures Who Contributed to Its Cultural, Economic, and Political HeritageGRADES 5 - 12NSS-USH.5-12.1-10 All Eras